The Feverish Knight and the Butler's Scheme
The sight of a fully grown adult woman—and a knight who boasted the empire’s strongest martial prowess at that—clutching the blanket with white knuckles while sniveling through a raging fever was something else.
The instant I realized it really was from the high fever,
her body pitched forward.
“Whoa! Sir Karin!”
Karin, drenched in cold sweat and staggering, looked ready to collapse on the spot.
I lunged forward and caught her around the waist, barely keeping her from slamming into the floor.
“Sir Karin! Get a hold of yourself!”
I scooped up her limp form and gently laid her on the bed.
Watching her pant with hot, labored breaths as consciousness slipped away, I kicked the door open and bolted into the corridor.
“Head Butler! Shepherd!”
My shout echoed through the midnight halls of the grand ducal castle.
Before long, Shepherd appeared, still in his nightclothes with a robe thrown over them, hurrying down the stairs from the third floor with a string of servants in tow.
“What is the matter, Sir Veil? Is it an assassin?”
“No, it’s Sir Karin—she suddenly came down with a burning fever and collapsed! We need a doctor, quickly—”
At my frantic cry, Shepherd’s face hardened. He stepped into Karin’s room without another word.
He checked her forehead and the back of her neck, then studied her complexion with careful eyes.
After a moment the old butler let out a relieved sigh and delivered his diagnosis in that same dignified tone.
“There is no need for excessive worry, Sir Veil. This is not a life-threatening illness.”
“Then what is it? Why did she collapse so suddenly?”
“Sir Karin hails from the warm southern region of Libertree, does she not? The abrupt move to our harsh northern climate has brought on a case of the northern endemic cold.”
“The northern endemic cold?”
“Indeed. It is a rather severe flu-like body ache that often strikes newcomers to the North. A few days of rest and fever management should see her back on her feet.”
Shepherd’s explanation finally let me breathe again.
“Haa… that’s a relief. Then I’ll have the maids come and nurse her right aw—”
But then.
Shepherd took a basin, a damp towel, and a bottle of fever reducer from the maid standing behind him and, without ceremony, deposited the whole armful into my hands.
“……?”
I stood there dumbly, clutching the pile of nursing supplies, and stared at him.
“Head Butler? What is all this?”
Shepherd smiled and patted my shoulder.
“Have you not spent the most time by Sir Karin’s side recently, Sir Veil?”
“Well, recently, yes, but—”
“Precisely. Given the possibility of contagion, it seems most appropriate for you to tend to her.”
Before I could protest, Shepherd had already herded the maids away and was striding toward the door.
“Administer the medicine every two hours and change the towel whenever her forehead grows hot.”
Click.
“……”
I stood frozen in the middle of the third-floor guest room, arms full of towels and medicine bottles, utterly abandoned.
“……Pardon?”
A few seconds later, once my brain caught up, a wail of pure injustice burst out of me.
“Wait, Head Butler?! You said it was a regional endemic cold! That means only people from other regions can catch it, so the maids could nurse her just fine!”
My shout never made it through the firmly shut door.
Caught in the head butler’s absurd logic, I had been saddled with the sole responsibility of nursing a feverish female knight in her twenties inside this cramped room.
“This is insane, seriously……”
Tears of resentment in my eyes, I had no choice but to head to the bathroom to wet the towel.
Having locked Veil inside Karin’s room with strict orders to nurse her, Head Butler Shepherd strolled down the third-floor corridor at a leisurely pace.
A secretive, deeply satisfied smile played on his lips.
Tap, tap.
The moment Shepherd turned the dim corner of the hallway,
someone was waiting in the shadows, pacing anxiously.
“Well? How did it go, Shepherd?!”
It was Rebecca.
Shepherd glanced around once, then bowed deeply with his usual impeccable courtesy and whispered.
“Everything proceeded according to plan.”
“Really?! You left the two of them alone in the room?!”
“Yes, my lady. I handed Sir Veil every last nursing item and withdrew. No one will enter that room until morning.”
At Shepherd’s report, the Grand Duchess clapped both hands over her mouth and let out a silent scream of pure delight.
Kyaaa! Perfect! A sealed room, a delicate female knight collapsed from high fever, and a steadfast man staying by her side all night, wiping away her sweat!
It was exactly like the bedside-care romance cliché from chapter four of the novel she had read.
That was right.
Rebecca had been the first to notice Karin’s coughing and rising fever yesterday. She had immediately given Shepherd a hint.
That was why the butler had desperately blocked Veronica when the girl tried to join the surprise dawn sword training.
“You did wonderfully! I’ll make sure you get a special bonus once His Grace returns!”
“Carrying out my lady’s wishes is my greatest joy.”
Shepherd was taking just as much pleasure as the Grand Duchess in this secret little scheme of locking two young people in a room to spark a pink-tinted romance.
“Hehehe! I can’t wait to see how the atmosphere between them has changed by tomorrow morning!”
Rebecca’s sly, romantic delusions merged with the head butler’s considerable authority, and the weary night for the two people trapped in the narrow third-floor guest room grew deeper.
Click.
I stared at the firmly closed door of the third-floor guest room and let out a hollow sigh.
In my arms were the basin, damp towel, and bottle of fever reducer that Shepherd had forced on me.
“Haa… seriously, being a houseguest here is never boring.”
Muttering to myself, I slowly turned and approached the bed.
On it lay Karin, struck down by the northern endemic cold, breathing roughly in her sleep.
Right now she was nothing more than a frail patient moaning in the grip of fever.
“Guess I should change the towel first.”
I sat on the simple chair beside the bed, soaked the towel in the cold water of the basin, and wrung it out tightly.
Then I carefully placed the cool cloth on Karin’s burning forehead.
“Mmm……”
The cold sensation made her frown and toss her head.
The fever must have been fierce; the collar of her tight training shirt was soaked through with sweat.
Must be one hell of a cold. Then again, someone who spent her whole life in the warm south suddenly coming up to the North—her body was bound to revolt.
I adjusted the towel’s position and murmured quietly.
I had seen countless soldiers at the barrier collapse from endemic diseases, so I knew how painful this illness was in its early stages.
After I had spent a long while silently changing the towel again and again,
“……Hic.”
A soft sob suddenly reached my ears.
“Hm?”
I leaned down in surprise and saw transparent tears rolling from Karin’s tightly closed eyes, soaking the pillowcase.
“Sir Karin? Are you awake? Does it hurt somewhere?”
When I asked urgently, Karin struggled to lift her heavy eyelids and looked at me with hazy eyes.
Half her mind seemed to have flown away from the fierce fever; her gaze was as unfocused as it had been the night she got drunk on wine.
“V-Veil……”
“Yes, it’s me. You have a high fever. Try to calm down……”
“Hic…!”
Before I could finish comforting her, Karin suddenly burst into loud, childlike sobs.
“H-hey?! Why are you crying? Where does it hurt?”
I shot up from my chair in alarm.
“I… I caught a terrible disease… hic……”
“It’s not an incurable illness, it’s just the northern endemic cold. A few days of rest and—”
“The young lady… our young lady…!”
Karin reached out with a sweat-soaked hand and clutched my sleeve tightly.
“I didn’t even realize I was sick… I was in the same space as the young lady today… What if it’s contagious! What if I passed this painful illness on to her?!”
Ah, this woman really is loyal to the bone.
She had collapsed from a fever bad enough to kill her, yet here she was, crying her heart out at the mere thought that she might have given a cold to the ten-year-old lord she served.
I was dumbfounded, but her fierce loyalty made a helpless laugh slip out.
“Calm down, Sir Karin. The young lady is perfectly fine.”
I patted her hand and began reassuring her with logic.
“First of all, this afternoon’s sword lesson was a rest day, and during the dawn training the head butler took the young lady away early, so there was hardly any contact time.”
I threw open the tightly closed window, letting the cold northern night air ventilate the room.
“And didn’t the head butler say it himself? This is just a kind of body ache that southerners get when they can’t adapt to the northern chill. Pure-blooded northerners like the young lady don’t catch this endemic cold. I’m from the barrier myself and I’m perfectly fine. It’s not contagious, so stop worrying.”
At my explanation, Karin’s sobs tapered off with a small hiccup.
“……R-really? Our young lady is safe?”
“Yes, really. She’s probably sound asleep in her own room right now.”
When I closed the window and sat back down, Karin let out a sigh of relief and stroked her chest.
But the tears clinging to her lashes still hadn’t dried.
This time,
“Hic… still… her birthday party is right around the corner……”
Karin began sobbing again.
“If I stay bedridden like this… I won’t be able to stay by the young lady’s side on her important birthday when His Grace arrives… and the knighting ceremony event we prepared will be ruined… even your gift, Sir Veil, I’ll end up ruining it……”
A grown adult woman—no, a knight who boasted the empire’s strongest martial prowess—clutching the blanket with white knuckles while sniveling through a raging fever was something else.
“There are still a few days left until the young lady’s birthday party. The head butler said the fever should break in two or three days at most, so if you just take the medicine quietly and rest, you’ll recover in plenty of time.”
“Can I… really do that? Will I be able to hold a sword properly for the knighting ceremony that day?”
“Yes, you will. So stop worrying about pointless things.”
Karin’s lips trembled, then a faint smile spread across them.
“……Thank you, Sir Veil. Hearing your words puts my mind at ease.”
Karin closed her eyes as if savoring the cool sensation of the towel on her forehead.
But the repentance session wasn’t over yet.
“And… I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for now? I’m getting tired of accepting apologies.”
“About your… sword training, Sir Veil.”
Karin turned her head to look at me with an incredibly bitter, pitiful expression.
“If I stay bedridden for several days, your dawn training time will be wasted. I boasted that I would make you the strongest in the empire… yet here I am, collapsing so irresponsibly as your teacher. How can I ever repay this sin, this debt……”
She was genuinely tormented, as if my delayed training progress wounded her own honor.
But the moment I heard that heartfelt apology,
Whoa, fuck yeah! Since this woman’s down, that means no early morning training tomorrow!! I can sleep in!
Internally I was practically tap-dancing, but I kept a battlefield poker face and spoke in a deliberately regretful tone.
“Ah… that is truly unfortunate. I was feeling the joy of growing day by day under your guidance every dawn, you see.”
“Sir Veil……”
“But what can we do? There’s no fighting illness. Don’t worry about training and just focus on getting better.”
I forced a smile and picked up the fever-reducer bottle from the table.
“All right, enough sentimental talk. Let’s get the medicine into you first. Once you take it and sleep deeply, the sweat should break and the fever will drop by morning.”
I spooned out the dark liquid and was about to bring it to Karin’s lips when a thought struck me.
Wait. She hasn’t washed since finishing her schedule.
If she took the medicine and went to sleep like this, she would sweat even more all night.
Having seen countless wounds fester or fevers worsen from poor hygiene on the battlefield, I couldn’t just let it slide.
“Um, Sir Karin.”
I lowered the spoon and asked very carefully.
“Have you… taken a shower?”
At my question, Karin’s already flushed cheeks burned twice as red.
She must have been aware of it too; she whipped her gaze away and mumbled in a voice as small as a mosquito.
“……No, I didn’t. I was going to after the knighting rehearsal……”
“I figured. You smell pretty strongly of sweat.”
“S-shut up! What are you saying to a patient!”
“It’s a hygiene issue. If you take the medicine and sleep while sweating, the fever won’t come down. Why don’t you take the medicine after you go into the bathroom and quickly rinse the sweat off with warm water?”
Karin pulled the blanket all the way up to her chin and shook her head stubbornly.
“I-it’s fine… I can sleep like this, no problem.”
“Hurry up.”
“I said no! How am I supposed to wash with… with a grown man sitting right here in the room!”
Karin glared at me, only her eyes peeking out from under the blanket, and snapped.
“There’s a healthy adult male sitting in the room… how am I supposed to take my clothes off, wash, and come out! What do you take my honor for!”
Ah.
When she put it that way, she had a point.
No matter how you framed it as a patient and caregiver relationship, having a young woman casually go take a shower while a man waited just outside the door in a small guest room would be incredibly embarrassing and nerve-wracking.
“Aha, you should have said so sooner.”
I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly and stood up.
“Then I’ll step out into the corridor for a bit. Wash comfortably, change into fresh clothes, and call me when you’re done. I’ll come back in and give you the medicine. Sound good?”
At my considerate suggestion, Karin finally let out a sigh of relief and gave a small nod.
“……Sorry for the trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. Just hurry up and wash.”
I set the basin and towel aside and walked toward the door.
To give Karin time to wash in peace, I grabbed the doorknob and pulled the guest-room door open.
Creak—.
The moment I tried to step into the corridor,
“……?!”
I almost screamed.
Head Butler Shepherd was standing right there, blocking the doorway.